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@Alaukik Only if they're super-significant updates. Ie if they completely change how the game works, or it takes the game from a point of not really being playable (eg GemRB) to being feature complete.
– Oli♦Mar 2 '11 at 16:35

but that would exclude most floss games.why not only exclude minor updates?
– LincityMar 2 '11 at 16:38

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@Alaukik Simply because I'm looking for new games. I'm not trying to exclude FOSS, I just don't want to generate another list of games that everybody and their mother has seen before.
– Oli♦Mar 2 '11 at 16:43

19 Answers
19

Proprietary, beta preorder for $19.95

OilRush is a real-time strategy game based on group control. It offers mechanics of a classical RTS combined with a Tower Wars genre: control the upgrade of production platforms as well as their defence forces, and send battle groups of naval and air units to capture enemy platforms and oil rigs.

Phoronix have been harking on about this for months like they're getting a dollar every time they mention it (they probably are), but it does look like a genuinely pretty game. It's made by Unigine, a company that sells a closed source graphics engine and hardware benchmarks based around the tech-demos they've made with it.

Proprietary, priced at $19.99

Trine is a physics-based action game where three characters allow clever solutions to challenges created by hazardous puzzles and threatening enemies. The gameplay is based on fully interactive physics - each character's different abilities and tactics can be used to invent new ways to overcome obstacles and save the kingdom!

I've played this under Wine and can heartily recommend it. It's going to be awesome to play it through again natively.

Proprietary, priced at $26.95

A hard to classify adventure-creativity game that is—in the words of its creator—about placing blocks while running from skeletons. Minecraft is a playground where players pursue self-set goals such as mining resources, gathering food, constructing buildings, accessing alternate dimensions, and riding pigs.

Premise

Minecraft is a game about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine. At night monsters come out, make sure to build a shelter before that happens.

Features

A rich, randomly generated world of hills, deserts, swamps, oceans, and mushroom-fields. Towns of villagers, hidden ruins, and alternate dimensions to explore.

Proprietary, priced at $19.99

Achron is the first game to feature single-player and multiplayer free-form time travel. It is the world's first meta-time strategy game, a real-time strategy game where players and units can jump to and play at different times simultaneously and independently.

Open source, free to play

A fun, fast paced shooter built on the Dark Places engine, with many weapons and game modes. Based on Nexuiz (from which it was forked), Xonotic introduces many new features, maps, and changes, and continues to improve.

Nota Bene: Not good for children unless certain features are disabled, such as gore and taunts.

Open source, free to play

A nice-looking open source racing game with both arcade and simulation modes. Watch the trailer.

Premise

Speed Dreams is a fork of the famous open racing car simulator Torcs, aiming to implement exciting new features, cars, tracks and AI opponents to make a more enjoyable game for the player, as well as constantly improving visual and physics realism.

Features

Over 30 unique car models spanning five classes of competition

Three all-new car classes; World Rally, LS-GT1, and LS-GT2

Graphical updates for many original TORCS tracks

Two all-new circuits; Brondehach and Goldstone Sand

Skilled and intelligent AI drivers; fight down to the last meter of track

23 detailed circuits; ranging from fantastic originals to replications of real-world circuits to the best of original TORCS

All-new Career Mode; battle your way up from boring production cars to powerful world-class racing machines

Proprietary, free to play

“Beacon” is a sprawling adventure-platformer involving SAD THINGS and MYSTERY. It also has a jetpack. It’ll take you about 15 minutes to play.

The description is accurate but don't be put off by it. You get more for your 15 minutes than you do in a lot of other games. It has a nice little story, superb music, and there's a native Linux build (as well as OSX and Windows builds) so almost everybody is catered for.

At the very least, this is promising work from a clearly talented developer who is making
things for Linux users. If you like the game you should show them your appreciation via twitter or as a comment on the page.

As a side note, I found running the Beacon binary directly didn't work. Just run chmod +x Beacon.sh and then run that launcher script instead.

Open source, free to play

FlightGear is a free flight simulator project. It is being developed through the gracious contributions of source code and spare time by many talented people from around the globe. Among the many goals of this project are the quest to minimize short cuts and “do things right”, the quest to learn and advance knowledge, and the quest to have better toys to play with.

The idea for Flight Gear was born out of a dissatisfaction with current commercial PC flight simulators. A big problem with these simulators is their proprietariness and lack of extensibility. There are so many people across the world with great ideas for enhancing the currently available simulators who have the ability to write code, and who have a desire to learn and contribute. Many people involved in education and research could use a spiffy flight simulator frame work on which to build their own projects; however, commercial simulators do not lend themselves to modification and enhancement. The Flight Gear project is striving to fill these gaps.

Offtopic-rant: I wish FlightGear was easier. I wish all simulators had a "I'm not a commercial pilot - please don't treat me like one"-mode so n00bs can take off. Nonetheless, it's a great looking sim.
– Oli♦Sep 16 '11 at 14:03

A dark action rouguelike set in a Legend of Zelda-style dungeon. Offers fast-paced bullet hell combat, procedurally generated levels, and many hours of replay value.

Premise

When Isaac’s mother starts hearing the voice of God demanding a sacrifice be made to prove her faith, Isaac escapes into the basement facing droves of deranged enemies, lost brothers and sisters, his fears, and eventually his mother.

I got this game with the Humble Bundle, haven't played it yet though. Didn't know it was something like The Legend Of Zelda :p I think I'm going to give it a shot tomorrow :D
– RobinJNov 7 '11 at 19:26

Proprietary, priced at $24.99

A turn-based tactics game where you must predict the motions of an enemy squad, conjecturing and positioning your own to defeat them.

Premise

Frozen Synapse [...] brings the simultaneous turn-based strategy genre bang up-to-date and lets you give detailed, accurate orders to your squad: classic gameplay with a modern interface. Plan your moves, test them out, then hit the "Prime" button: both you and your enemy's turns are executed simultaneously. Competitive-but-intuitive multiplayer and a huge single player campaign mean that Frozen Synapse will give you hours and hours of tactical delight.

Proprietary, free to play

An arcade driving game in the style of Grand Theft Auto 2.

Premise

Follow the stories of a couple of friends from childhood, who now stand on the opposite sides of barricade - Thomas is a lawman, Kevin works for Mafia. Witness how their life paths cross while they take hard decisions, leading to a dramatic finale. Out of the story mode, multi-player awaits you, where you can face real players in various game types. Shootouts, car thefts, pursuits around the cities; all that within this fast-paced game!

Features

Single-player story mode where you
play as both a lawman and a thug.

Multi-player mode with various game
types: free for all, 1v1, team
deathmatch, capture the flag,
hunting, bombmatch, race.

A lot of cars, weapons, power-ups and
destructible objects that succesfully
diversify the gameplay.

Fire to enemies while seating in a
car as a passenger.

Precise aiming mode makes it no
problem to accurately fire to enemies
even from a roof (despite the fact
the game exhibits an old-school
top-down view).

Installation

Proprietary, priced between $9.99 and $15.00

A real-time strategy game for those who enjoy heavy-duty firepower. Deploy mercenaries and explosives against zombies while survivors flee for rescue choppers.

Premise

Take command of your mercenary forces in Atom Zombie Smasher. The zombie apocalypse is upon us and it's up to you to evacuate everyone before they fall prey to the undead. Conduct massive rescue operations with a helping hand from snipers, artillery crews, orbital bombardments, and more.

Features

Wackily overpowered and satisfying weapons. Artillery crews, mines, snipers, dynamite, orbital canons, bioweapons... this is 'I love the smell of napalm in the morning' the game.

A lengthy, unscripted campaign. Engage zombies at cities on the overworld to contain outbreaks. Rescue scientists to develop new weapon technologies.

Strategy that alternates between careful beforehand planning and frantic, seat-of-the-pants real time decision-making.

Strong production values. In particular, the Hawaiian Surfer soundtrack and humorous comicbook-style vignettes color the game with great panache.

Many different modes and difficulty settings to keep players coming back

Proprietary, priced at $4.99

An addictive, simple, and somewhat masochistic platformer. Great chiptune soundtrack.

Premise

VVVVVV is a retro styled 2D platformer by Terry Cavanagh, creator of dozens of free games. You play as the fearless leader of a team of dimension exploring scientists who inadvertently crash, and are separated. The game involves exploring the strange world you've found yourself in, and reuniting your friends.

VVVVVV explores one simple game mechanic: you cannot jump - instead, you reverse your own gravity at the press of a button. The game focuses on playing with this mechanic in a variety of interesting ways.

Proprietary, priced at $4.99

Blocks That Matter is a game that combine platformer and puzzle-solving skills, in an incredible mashup between tetris, super mario bros and minecraft.

You are Tetrobot,a tiny driller robot that travels underground in order to save its creators, kidnapped by someone who wants to steal their work.

Sand, wood, stone, obsidian, iron, diamond : each matter has its specific behaviour you'll have to use wisely and take advantage of them. You also have the possibility to destroy lines of 8+ blocks in a very «retro russian» game style.

I find Voxatron a pretty amusing game to play, only it can get a bit frustrating on the harder parts :p It's a kind of arcade-style adventure game made out of tiny cubes wich you can destory and build, and you've got a pea gun :D It's not entirely finished yet, neither is it a free game. But you've still got a week left to get it from Humble Bundle for whatever price you want. It includes a level designer to make you own levels, wich you can share with others.

Proprietary, priced at $14.99

A farm management game somewhat in the model of a Tychoon or Harvest Moon game. Guide your family's homespead to happiness and prosperity.

Premise

19th century farmsteading game Work the farm in this game of 19th century farmsteading and build a home for your families. Clicking cows won't earn you any cash. This is a simulation of a farmstead experienced in stories which span a generation. Keep them fed, develop their skills, and grow their land in to a Family Farm!

Features

An innovative tycoon game in the setting of 19th century farmsteads.

The player controls characters with RPG-like attributes, skills and needs.

Proprietary, priced at $9.99

That's not a typo. Scoregasm is a fast-paced 2d space shooter very similar in gameplay to Geometry Wars. Very similar indeed. You shoot things that come towards you and if they hit you, you die. If you kill enough in a short time span (ie a combo) you're rewarded with a better progression pattern... And some female "moaning".

I've only played the demo so far but I really like it. As I just said in chat:

First Linux game I think I've played that has gone (and I'm paraphrasing) "Oh it looks like you have a Playstation controller plugged in and this game rocks with a gamepad, do you want to set it up?" and has then flawlessly worked with the controller

I think it would be fine to play without a gamepad but if you have one, plug it in and rock on. Things like this are great with dual analogue sticks.

Free demo available from the game's site as well as Desura if you're in the Linux beta group (which you should be!)